Leaders want to keep Russia's history in positive light

Feb. 19, 2014
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British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the USSR Josef Stalin at the Black Sea resort of Yalta. / AFP file photo

by Doug Stanglin and Anna Arutunyan, USA TODAY

by Doug Stanglin and Anna Arutunyan, USA TODAY

MOSCOW - Russian authorities are growing increasingly testy over how the country's past - particularly World War II - is publicly depicted, and some legislators are backing a law that would protect Russian history from negative portrayals.

Konstantin Ernst, who produced the opening ceremony for the Sochi Olympics, told Ekho Moskvy radio that he was disappointed that the International Olympic Committee urged him not to include elements about World War II in the production. The IOC said it would set a bad precedent.

Ernst said he found it extremely difficult and even painful to omit the segment, which he said could have been "the strongest moment of the whole ceremony."

Now, a lawmaker wants to pass a law protecting Russian history from some perceived slights in the media.

"Our history and our point of view on historical events" is being deliberately distorted in Russia and abroad, Alexei Pushkov, who heads the State Duma Foreign Policy Committee, told the Russian news media.

"All of this is part of one chain. And when there's such a battle for history going on, when EU countries pass laws protecting a certain point of view of history, maybe it's time for us to think about legislation that will protect our history and our point of view on historical events."

His proposal came in answer to plans in neighboring Latvia to criminalize the denial of the Soviet Occupation of their country, a controversial issue that has divided the two nations for years.

"The law could, for instance, target the rehabilitation of Nazism and equating the Soviet Union with Hitler's Germany," Pushkov told USA TODAY on Friday. "Based on international law, such comparisons should be outlawed."

Pushkov said he believes it is unacceptable for media to make such comparisons. He added, however, that they should face administrative, not criminal responsibility.

"The need for such a law needs to be widely discussed," he said, adding he was not drafting such a bill himself. "If democratic European countries are passing such laws, we should do the same."

Pushkov's statements are the latest in a string of patriotic rhetoric coming from Russian leaders calling for more positive representation of Russia's history -â?? and that has some Russians worried about creeping propaganda and censorship.

Among recent eye-opening incidents:

â?¢ The Russian Foreign Ministry reprimanded CNN about an article, focusing on unattractive monuments around the world, that called a Soviet war monument in Brest, a city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, ugly. The CNN article had suggested that some think the soldier "simply looks constipated." CNN apologized and edited the piece.

â?¢ The vocally independent TV network Dozhd (Rain) was dropped by a a major Russian satellite service after running a poll asking whether the Soviet Union should have surrendered Leningrad to the Nazis instead of enduring an 872-day siege that cost as many as 1.5 million lives.

â?¢ Ekho Moskvy, an opposition-supporting radio station, drew heat after publishing a blog from a satirist who compared the 2014 Sochi Olympics to the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany. The commentary compared 15-year-old Russian figure skater Julia Lipnitskaia to a German shot put champion during the 1936 games in Berlin.

"I really like that little girl on skates a lot, but just imagine how much Berliners in summer 1936 liked the shot putter Hans Woelke," wrote Viktor Shenderovich.

Deputy parliament speaker Vladimir Vasilyev demanded an apology and told MPs on Tuesday that "society will not accept insults to veterans," Reuters reports. Shenderovich refused to back down.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on historians to get rid of "ideological trash" when penning school textbooks.

"We are diminishing the importance of what was done by our ancestors," the Russian leader told historians during a meeting in the Kremlin in January. "I don't understand why we are doing this. We need to instill respect for our own past and love for our motherland."

In December, Putin insisted that the head of a state-owned news agency must be "patriotic," overhauling Russia's largest news agency and replacing its head.

Last summer, another conservative lawmaker, Irina Yarovaya, submitted a draft bill that would make criticism of the actions of Allied forces of World War II punishable by a three-year prison term.

While such laws are a long way from passage, some experts worry that the rhetoric itself is creating a dangerous environment for historians and journalists with a different point of view.

"This is part of a top-down policy (of patriotism) coming from the Kremlin," said Denis Volkov, a researcher at the independent Levada Center polling organization. "Part of it is deliberate policy from the presidential administration, part of it is coming from lawmakers themselves who are currying favor in hopes of getting promoted, but who also sincerely believe in these (patriotic) proposals. Even if such laws are not passed, (the rhetoric) forms an (environment) where independent analysis is suppressed. Under that system, everyone is vulnerable."

Russians have complex attitudes toward their own history. About half of the population - 49% - have a positive view of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who presided over World War II and a purge that saw millions of people killed, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Levada Center.

In the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russian communists have unveiled plans to erect a monument to Stalin in a Siberian city where he spent time in his final exile before his rise to power, a local lawmaker said Friday.

The monument is planned to be built by next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II on May 9.

Stalin's approval has grown since the 1990s, sociologists say, but that may be the result of state rhetoric.

"It's hard to talk about public opinion if only one point of view predominates," Volkov said. "When there are three state-controlled channels and when the majority of the population gets its news exclusively from them, public opinion is largely shaped by the government."

Historian Boris Kagarlitsky says that among a lot of people on both the left and the right, Stalin is more popular even than Lenin because he is seen as a tough leader "who got things done."

Sergei Markov, head of the Institute of Political Studies and a member of the public chamber, says there is a "big, intensive discussion" among the leaders now on how to present Russian history because it "produces citizens' attitude toward the country."

He said there is an attempt to the blend the various stages of Russian history - from tsarist to present day, and even its Byzantine roots, while not ignoring its repressive elements.

He notes that Russia, under Putin, has adopted the music of the Soviet national anthem, a flag from imperial Russia and a two-headed eagle as a state symbol dating to the Byzantine Empire.

Putin "attempted to bring some peacemaking between different historical periods," he says.

But one aspect of Russia's history - the soldiers from what Russia calls The Great Patriotic War - is inviolable.

Markov says he supports a criminal law, if only with a "small, symbolic punishment," for those who deny the country's sovereignty and who "deny the heroism of Soviet soldiers fighting against Nazis."

"Don't touch big heroes," he says.

Historians call the proposals part of an ideological doctrine that Putin has been trying to implement since he became president in 2000. But rather than a return to Communist ideology, Putin is tapping into the ideology of the Tsars, according to historian Irina Karatsuba.

"This is a lot like ideological doctrine of Orthodoxy, autocracy and collectivism that was being implemented during the reign of Nicholas I (from 1825-1855)," Karatsuba said. "I think we will reach a point where we see laws being passed that will make arguing with this ideological doctrine a criminal offense." History, she fears, is being pressured to turn into propaganda, calling the trend "neo-totalitarian."

How the new plans to shape history will be put into place remains to be seen, another historian said.

"The government is using its resources, financial and informational, to create a new ideological doctrine, to create an official historic truth" that excludes all other points of view, says Artemy Pushkaryov, senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We're not going to see so much censorship as lack of financing for research that doesn't cater to the official point of view."

"There is a fine line between propaganda and science," he added, and that line is likely being crossed.